Guerrillas are on the run, but human rights violations mount
For the third time in as many weeks, national security forces went on alert, surrounding Guatemala City and searching cars on highways leading into the capital. The occasion was the six-month anniversary of the Aug. 8 coup that brought General Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores to power. Although the day passed without any protest or disruption, the heightened security and the absence of any official celebration underscored the extreme uneasiness felt by the government of Central America's most populous (7.9 million) republic. As in neighboring El Salvador, a leftist insurgency poses a permanent challenge to the regime. Mejía, whose country has experienced two coups in less than two years, also worries about the intentions of his fellow military officers.
Known as the "country of eternal springtime," Guatemala appears peaceful. Late-model cars breeze along the capital's tree-lined boulevards, and restaurants draw crowds with such delicacies as imported stone crabs and tender churrasco steaks. But that façade of tranquillity conceals some unpleasant facts. According to Western diplomats, the average number of violent deaths each week has increased from 150 under former President Efraín Ríos Montt to 190. Daily newspapers display incongruously cheerful pictures of students and young professionals who have "disappeared." Earlier this month an engineering student known for his leftist sympathies was shot and wounded while at work. Kidnaped from a hospital emergency room by ten armed men, he was found four days later on the outskirts of Guatemala City with 15 bullets in his body. That same day a professor of medicine was machine-gunned as he got into his car. These incidents prompted the rector of Guatemala City's University of San Carlos to denounce "open aggression against the intelligentsia." In a report published this month, the U.S. State Department claimed that "serious human rights problems continued in Guatemala in 1983, but there were improvements in some important areas."
Despite the continuing violence, Mejía has won support because he has kept the promises he made after seizing power. The paunchy brigadier ended press censorship and abolished the secret tribunals that during Ríos Montt's 17-month rule sentenced 15 people to death for subversion and crimes against the state. He reduced value-added taxes from 10% to 7%, hoping to revive an economy plagued by 40% unemployment. Mejía has also won favor simply for being a Roman Catholic; most of his countrymen (90% of whom are Catholic) had grown uncomfortable with Ríos Montt's eccentric Protestant evangelism.